The United States is frittering away its role as a model for the rest of the world. The political system is plagued by an absurd level of hatred, the economy is stagnating and the infrastructure is falling into a miserable state of disrepair. On this election eve, many Americans are losing faith in their country's future.

After a brilliant century and a terrible decade, the United States, in this important election year, has reached a point in its history when the obvious can no longer be denied: The reality of life in America so greatly contradicts the claim -- albeit one that has always been exaggerated -- to be the "greatest nation on earth," that even the most ardent patriots must be overcome with doubt.

This realization became only too apparent during and after Hurricane Sandy, the monster storm that ravaged America's East Coast last week, its effects made all the more devastating by the fact that its winds were whipping across an already weakened country. The infrastructure in New York, New Jersey and New England was already in trouble long before the storm made landfall near Atlantic City. The power lines in Brooklyn and Queens, on Long Island and in New Jersey, in one of the world's largest metropolitan areas, are not underground, but are still installed along a fragile and confusing above-ground network supported by utility poles, the way they are in developing countries.

This in-depth 4-part essay was posted on the German website spiegel.de on Monday...and I thank Swiss reader B.G. for the first story in today's column. The link is here.

Some call Max Keiser a 'traitor' but America's most outrageous political pundit is about to become the most widely watched newscaster on the planet. Here, he explains why he won't be voting in Tuesday's US election.

A serf in the days of King John, Max Keiser argues, was in many ways better off than some US voters in 2012.

"Because in the age of Robin Hood," Keiser says, "at least the process of theft was transparent. The barons came to your house. They whacked you over the head then they took all your money." Even if the poor didn't exactly empathise with their oppressors, Keiser adds, they could at least comprehend their methods. "And the serfs," he continues, "did enjoy a modicum of stability. They got something in return for their enslavement. A small plot of land. Shelter. A relationship with the lord of the manor." In the modern age of "financial tyranny" orchestrated by what Keiser refers to as "the banksters" in charge of the major financial institutions in the US and Europe, he believes, "We have reverted to a more pernicious kind of neo-feudalism. The instruments of larceny have changed; that's all."

This rather long [and pithy] exposé on Russia Today's Max Keiser was posted on the independent.co.uk Internet site last Monday...and I thank U.K. reader Tariq Khan for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Inside a sprawling Manhattan command center, a board that detects subway activity by sensor had gone quiet. No trains were running; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had shut the system down as Hurricane Sandy approached.

Suddenly, the screens inexplicably crackled to life.

Something was moving down there. And it was not the trains.

To the subway’s chief maintenance officer, the storm’s encroaching waters were even more obvious. He was forced to flee with his flashlight from the South Ferry station in Lower Manhattan as the waters charged over the platform and up the terminal stairs, chasing him like an attack dog.

This 3-page story was posted on The New York Times website on Thursday...and I thank Donald Sinclair for the first of many stories today. The link is here.

Well, Hillary's off and running for 2016...and also running away from the disaster in Benghazi. One has to wonder if that story will hurt her chances as more details are revealed. We'll see.

This story showed up on the dailymail.co.uk Internet site on Thursday afternoon GMT...and I thank reader 'David in California' for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Petraeus disclosed the affair in a letter released to the CIA work force on Friday afternoon, writing: "Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours."

Petraeus told President Barack Obama of his affair and offered his resignation during a meeting Thursday, a senior official told NBC News.

In a statement, Obama said he accepted Petraeus’s resignation on Friday.

This story was posted over on the NBC website yesterday...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it along. The link is here.

Senior lawmakers said Thursday that they were moving quickly to take advantage of the postelection political atmosphere to try to strike an agreement that would avert a fiscal crisis early next year when trillions of dollars in tax increases and automatic spending cuts begin to go into force.

Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, said he had begun circulating a draft plan to overhaul the tax code and entitlements, had met with 25 senators from both parties and “been on the phone nonstop since the election.”

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the Maine Republican who will retire at the end of the year, made it clear that she intended to press for a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff and get serious on the deficit, lame duck or not.

“The message and signals we send in the coming days could bear serious consequences for this country,” she said. “It could trigger another downgrade. It could trigger a global financial crisis. This is a very consequential moment.”

This story was posted on The New York Times website...and I thank Donald Sinclair for this second story in today's column. The link is here.

U.S. regulators on Friday delayed the effective date of a global agreement on greater bank capital buffers reached in response to the financial crisis of 2008.

The rule delay could help big banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. who must ultimately comply with the rules, as well as smaller banks who also will have to meet the requirements.

Specifically, the Federal Reserve and two other bank regulators introduced a proposal in June to implement the global agreement known as Basel III that suggested an effective date for institutions to comply of Jan. 1.

However, the U.S. regulators agreed Friday that “due to the wide range of views” expressed by interested institutions and others that a delay was necessary.

This marketwatch.com story was posted on their Internet site on Friday morning...and it's another item courtesy of 'David in California'. The link is here.

America’s cyber-war is already seeing collateral damage, and it’s hitting the country’s own billion-dollar companies. Oil giants Chevron say the Stuxnet computer virus made by the US to target Iran infected their systems as well.

California-based Chevron, a Fortune 500 company that’s among the biggest corporations in the world, admits this week that they discovered the Stuxnet worm on their systems back in 2010. Up until now, Chevron managed to make their finding a well-kept secret, and their disclosure published by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday marks the first time a US company has come clean about being infected by the virus intended for Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Mark Koelmel of the company’s earth sciences department says that they are likely to not be the last, though.

“We’re finding it in our systems and so are other companies,” says Koelmel. “So now we have to deal with this.”

This news item was posted on the Russia Today Internet site yesterday...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here.

Hundreds of thousands of protestors, probably a million according to some estimates, took to the streets of Buenos Aires on Thursday evening to hold the 8N pot-banging demonstration against the administration of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez.

Similar gatherings took place in the Greater Buenos Aires and other major Argentine cities as well as in tens of overseas cities in front of Argentine embassies and consulates, as confirmed by the social networks and twitters.

Earlier in the afternoon President Cristina Fernandez evoked her late husband, Nestor Kirchner and criticized without mentioning it, the 8N demonstration and pledging to never give up.

This item was posted on the mercopress.com Internet site in the wee hours of Friday morning. I thank Casey Research's own Louis James for bringing it to my attention...and the link is here.

Britain’s biggest bank is at the centre of a major HM Revenue and Customs investigation after it opened offshore accounts in Jersey for serious criminals living in this country, The Telegraph can disclose.

The tax authorities have obtained details of every British client of HSBC in Jersey after a whistleblower secretly provided a detailed list of names, addresses and account balances earlier this week.

The Telegraph understands that among those identified on the list are Daniel Bayes, a drug dealer who is now in Venezuela; Michael Lee, who was convicted of possessing more than 300 weapons at his house in Devon; three bankers facing major fraud allegations and a man once dubbed London’s “number two computer crook”. A series of other accounts containing six-figure deposits are also registered to modest addresses in relatively poor parts of the country.

The disclosures raise serious questions about HSBC’s procedures in Jersey, with the bank already preparing to pay fines of around $1.5 billion in America for breaking money laundering rules.

No surprises here, dear reader. As I said in this space within the last month...most of the world's large banks are heavily involved in money from drugs, arms...and other illegal/shady activities. Crooks have to bank somewhere! This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late on Thursday evening...and is another story courtesy of Donald Sinclair. The link is here.

The European Commission and top German politicians are becoming increasingly exasperated with both France and Britain as the summit in Brussels to determine the EU budget for the seven-year period from 2014 to 2020 approaches.

Both countries have been insistent on getting their way as member states position themselves for what promise to be difficult talks -- and both London and Paris have threatened to veto the budget if it doesn't meet their expectations. In response, European Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger, Germany's representative on the EU's executive body, has harshly criticized the two countries.

In a speech before the German association representing magazine publishers in the country, Oettinger warned against "cheap populism" when reporting on Greece, before saying "my problem children are France and Great Britain." By way of explanation, he said that with its anti-EU course, London has "taken leave of its senses." He added that tabloids such as The Sun appear to be trying to force Britain out of the EU. Turning to France, he said the country had too little industry and innovation.

This Roy Stephens offering showed up on the spiegel.de website yesterday...and the link is here.

Greece faces a week of tense brinkmanship with its international paymasters after officials in Brussels conceded that a long-awaited deal to release €31.5bn of bailout cash is unlikely to be finalised on Monday.

Athens is due to repay €5bn-worth of debts next week, and had hoped to unlock the latest tranche of rescue funds at Monday's meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

But privately senior officials in Brussels say that the Europeans and the IMF are in deep dispute about Greece.

Greece will have to leave the E.U. sooner or later, so it's best for all that it's sooner rather than later. This story was posted in The Guardian on Friday...and it's another contribution from Roy Stephens. The link is here.

A sign taped to a wall in an Athens hospital appealed for civility from patients. "The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May," it read, "Please respect their work."

Patients and their relatives glanced up briefly and moved on, hardened to such messages of gloom. In a country where about 1,000 people lose their jobs each day, legions more are still employed but haven't seen a paycheck in months. What used to be an anomaly has become commonplace, and those who have jobs that pay on time consider themselves the exception to the rule.

To the casual observer, all might appear well in Athens. Traffic still hums by, restaurants and bars are open, people sip iced coffees at sunny sidewalk cafes. But scratch the surface and you find a society in free-fall, ripped apart by the most vicious financial crisis the country has seen in half a century.

This AP story, filed from Athens on November 1st, was picked up by Fox News...and is something I've been saving for a weekend. I thank reader John Sanders for digging it up on our behalf...and the link is here.

Mohamed Talaat didn't like the fact Christian music was being played at a party to promote interfaith harmony in the Egyptian town of Minya south of Cairo, so together with a group of like-minded Islamist hardliners, he showed up to put a stop to it.

It was simply un-Islamic to broadcast Christian songs, Talaat explained.

"Egypt is Islamic and so we all have to accept Islamic rules to halt any strife," he said by telephone.

Four months since Egypt elected veteran Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohamed Mursi as president, human rights activists say hardliners are trying to impose Islamist ways on society.

This Reuters story was filed from Cairo on Wednesday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. The link is here.

Sharp, one of Japan’s biggest electronics firms, may be set to go under. We also note how other Japanese tech mega-corporations, including Panasonic and Sony, aren’t doing too well either. After Sharp posted its most recent loss, its financial rating fell to junk status, and the company is now seeking a government bailout. Panasonic was also hit with a near-junk rating by Fitch earlier this month, after it posted a loss 30 times larger than analysts had estimated.

Now, Sony—the biggest of Japan’s big dogs—can’t escape the bad news either. On Friday, Moody's downgraded Sony’s long-term debt rating from Baa2 to Baa3, one notch above junk status. This marks the second time in a month Sony has been hit with a downgrade.

"Without robust restructuring in the coming 12 to 18 months, Sony's non-financial services businesses will at best achieve roughly break even, and are also at risk of remaining unprofitable," the rating agency said in its report.

I must admit that all of the above was news to me. This story was posted on the arstechnica.com Internet site early Friday morning Mountain Standard Time...and it's courtesy of Alberta reader Brad Robertson. The link is here.

The first blog is with Rob Arnott...and it's headlined "The Greatest Fear of a $100 Billion Asset Manager Going Forward". Next is Gerald Celente. It's entitled "Gold, Silver Riots, Theft & Global Collapse". And lastly is this blog with Egon von Greyerz...and it bears the headline "What's Next for Gold as Governments Become More Desperate".

Sprott Physical Silver Trust, announced on Friday that it has priced its follow-on offering of 20,500,000 transferable, redeemable units of the Trust at a price of US$13.15 per Unit. As part of the Offering, the Trust has granted the underwriters an over-allotment option to purchase up to 3,075,000 additional Units. The gross proceeds from the Offering will be US$269,575,000 (US$310,011,250 if the underwriters exercise in full the over-allotment option).

Well, if the green shoe is fully exercised, PSLV's holdings will increase somewhere between 8 and 9 million ounces...the final number depending on how much cash they hold back. There's a possibility that the run-up in the silver price yesterday morning may have been the first part of the Sprott order hitting the market.

All the details are to be found in this Globe and Mail story from yesterday morning...and the link is here.

Gold's price pattern since the results of the U.S. Presidential election has been an interesting one. Most analysts had predicted that gold would rise if President Obama retained his position, and now other factors have come into play - perhaps most noticeably that the post-election nervousness about the path of the U.S. economy, coupled with no end in sight to the Eurozone problems (indeed things appear to be getting worse with expectations that the Eurozone is heading for recession - including mighty Germany).

What had been surprising about the path of the gold price through the past year or so is that it often fell back on poor global economic news when the old safe haven arguments for the yellow metal might have been thought to come increasingly into play.

To an extent that was because of relative dollar strength which meant that falls in the headline dollar price were not necessarily the case in other currencies - and given that the gold price tends to be quoted in U.S. dollars virtually everywhere as the general guideline price, the psychological impact of an apparent fall on investors, even if it hadn't fallen back in their own currency, should not be underestimated.

But, since the U.S. Presidential election it has been noticeable that gold in general has been rising in price regardless of U.S. dollar strength - admittedly this has only been over a short period of time so far but could be an indicator that gold's safe haven appeal is returning.

This mineweb.com item was written by Lawrie Williams, their General Manager and Editorial Director...and posted on their Internet site yesterday. I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it our way...and the link is here.

While the U.S. election aftershocks and the looming fiscal cliff have energised the yellow metal, some have asked questions about the current price floor.

In its latest Metals Magnifier report, the Barclays Capital writes, "The floor for gold prices has weakened with the seasonally strong period for demand providing less support than expected."

Adding that although volumes have improved since QE3 was announced, "volumes in India are still softer y/y. Buying in China has also provided a deflated cushion, with buying materialising amid a rising price environment."

The bank does point out, however, that physical bar premiums in Asia have started to improve with premiums in Singapore rising to their highest since July and to their highest in two months in Hong Kong.

Here's another story from the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and it's certainly worth reading. I thank Donald Sinclair once again for bringing it to our attention...and the link is here.

While Americans were still submitting their ballots, gold rallied on the possibility of a President Barack Obama reelection. With presidential results confirmed, it appears that Ben Bernanke’s job of hovering over the economy and dropping parachutes of money out of his helicopter is secure.

“Gold could not have asked for a better outcome,” with a second term for Obama, a Democratic Senate and Republican House, says UBS Investment Research. As the research firm explains in its morning note, “the high likelihood of political gridlock up ahead as attention now turns to the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling certainly presents upside opportunities for gold.”

UBS says the gold market isn’t even pricing in the outcome of the next Federal Open Market Committee meeting in December when the “conclusion of Operation Twist will morph into further quantitative easing.”

This short post from Frank...along with an excellent chart...was posted on the usfunds.com Internet site on Thursday. It's well worth skimming...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

Taking a break from the toil of digging, Leer Likuam sat on the edge of a shallow trench, puffed his pipe and boasted he once found a 200-gram gold nugget bigger than his thumb.

In Nanakanak, a village of stick huts in an area that has attracted hundreds of diggers since Sudan's civil war ended in 2005, Likuam's find would have been lucrative but unexceptional.

"Everything is luck," he said through a translator. On an average day he might dig up six grams, worth around 1,200 South Sudanese pounds ($270), he said. "Some days you're lucky."

Word of Nanakanak's riches has spread. In the capital Juba, international mining firms are lining up at South Sudan's ministry of petroleum and mining, aiming to get their hands on part of the vast, unexplored territory.

This longish piece is also courtesy of Donald Sinclair...and it, too, was also posted on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and the link is here.

Bulgarian archaeologists unearthed ancient golden artifacts, including bracelets with snake heads, a tiara with animal motifs and a horse head piece during excavation works at a Thracian tomb in northern Bulgaria, they said on Thursday.

The new golden artifacts are dated back to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century BC and were found in the biggest of 150 ancient tombs of a Thracian tribe, the Getae, that was in contact with the Hellenistic world.

The findings also included a golden ring, 44 applications of female figures as well as 100 golden buttons.

This story was posted on the argophillia.com Internet site yesterday...and is Donald Sinclair's final offering in today's column. The pictures alone are worth the trip...and the link is here.

Citing Bank of England records, Zero Hedge reveals that as the London Gold Pool was collapsing in 1968 the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England conspired to conceal from the German Bundesbank the deficient gold content of U.S. gold bars, apparently made from coin melt, that were being transferred to the Bundesbank to conclude gold swaps. This is, Zero Hedge says, another reason why the Bundesbank might want to cut off inquiry into the security of its foreign-vaulted gold.

GATA's chairman, Bill Murphy, pointed out to me that this ZH story still doesn't touch on the other major issues, mainly...1] has Germany swapped its gold with another country, 2] has it leased any of its gold, 3] is German gold encumbered in any way? [All excellent points, of course. - Ed]

Chris Powell also had this to say about this story..."Well, for years now we've been aware of the coin-melt issue from the days of the London Gold Pool. The really interesting thing here is just what ZH points to: the Fed and Bank of England conspiring to deceive the Bundesbank. If they were lying to the Bundesbank then, why not now as well?"

I thank Chris Powell for the headline and the paragraph of introduction. The Zero Hedge report is headlined "Bank of England to the Fed: 'No Indication Should, of Course, Be Given to the Bundesbank"...and I thank Marshall Angeles for being the first person through the door with this story yesterday. As I said in this space about a week ago, this German gold story has got miles to go before it breathes its last...and the link to this absolute must read ZH commentary is here.

This 34:24 minute video presentation that Eric made back in October is a must watch. I've only heard Eric talk like this in private. The entire presentation is all about the precious metals...and he pulls no punches. As I said, this is a must watch from one end to the other...and I found the web page a little slow to load, so be patient. I thank reader Chris Jansel for finding it for us on the au.finance.yahoo.com Internet site...and the link is here.